


Envelopes

by Framlingem



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Not an AU despite the beginning, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-19 23:58:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7382746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Framlingem/pseuds/Framlingem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezekiel's letter to Hogwarts arrives when he's sixteen. He's already sorted himself into Slytherin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Envelopes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



> Hi, Failsafe! I do not know if this is what you had in mind; I hope you like it anyway! Ezekiel, thoroughly in-character, did not do what I wanted him to and did this instead. I did really enjoy reading your letter.
> 
> Many thanks to Sel and Flamebyrd for Australian-picking this for me. Any mistakes are things I didn't even think to ask them about.

               The day Ezekiel Jones’s Hogwarts letter arrived, he was escaping from under the watchful eye of the teacher who’d been stuck supervising that day’s detention. Watchful or not, she hadn’t noticed a thing. The easy part had been the slow fade, moving his desk one or two centimetres at a time towards the door and sweet freedom.

               The tricky bit had been stealing her coffee mug on the way out. It said “#1 teacher” on it. Ezekiel begged to disagree, but then none of them had been that great. He’d been in detention (this time) because it had taken all of them two years to work out that he’d been manipulating his essays so that the first letter of each sentence spelled out rude words. Idiots.

               Ezekiel eased the classroom door shut, then looked left and right. All clear. He grinned and swigged from the coffee mug and swaggered out of the school. The sun was momentarily bright in his eyes before he got smacked in the face with a large envelope — which stung a bit, but at least provided some shade.

               It… was addressed to him. Or, well, there was no address, but there was a stamp, with no postmark, and his name in an elegant cursive. It was heavy paper, shiny gold on the inside, and it was definitely _not_ a Hogwarts letter. No way. The paper inside was blank except for the letterhead — Metropolitan Public Library? _Which_ Metropolitan Public Library? — but began to fill in slowly, in golden ink rather than green, and speak.

               “You have been selected,” it began.

               “Shut up shut up shut _up,_ ” hissed Ezekiel, jamming it into his pocket and walking faster.

               “… for a prestigious position…”

               “Be _quiet_!”  
               “With the Metropolitan Public Library.”

               “Which _one_?”

               The voice (somehow unmuffled by coming from inside a wadded up piece of paper jammed into the pocket of a pair of jeans) paused for a moment, and then said, “New York.”

               By now well out of sight of anyone who might care where he was, Ezekiel slowed to what he liked to think was a debonair saunter, pulled the letter out of his pocket, and uncrumpled it. The creases vanished as if they’d never been there. The golden ink gleamed. It seemed to wait.

               Magic wasn’t real. This had to be a trick. Sixteen-year-old delinquents in Melbourne did not get offered jobs in America that they hadn’t applied for. Not even if they had no actual record of delinquency, because nobody had been clever enough to catch them, and therefore were not technically delinquents.

               The paper wasn’t thick enough to conceal a wire. Ezekiel retrieved the envelope; nothing tricky there, either, not hidden in a fold, not hidden between the creamy paper and the shiny lining. He sniffed the ink, and scratched at it with a thumbnail. Some of it flaked off, then reformed as he watched until the letter was as perfect as it had been previously. He tore a corner off. It grew back, posh border and all.

               All right, magic was real. He grinned. What he couldn’t do with magic!

***

               The next morning, there was another envelope. It fell out of the brand-new cornflakes box while his mum was distracted by the ringing telephone. Another creamy envelope, postmarkless stamp, elegant cursive: _Mr. E. Jones_.

               He grabbed it and made his getaway out the front door to the sound of his mother’s voice.

               “I’m so sorry, Ms. Sato, he’s a good boy, really. _Ezekiel Jones, you come back here!_ ”

               This envelope, once he’d reached somewhere safe, contained silence and a pair of airline tickets. United Airlines, Melbourne to New York via Los Angeles. He’d never so much as left Victoria. Long way to the airport, though, and him without transportation.

               The envelope shook itself and dropped a Skybus ticket onto his shoes.

               Right, then.

               He posted a postcard from Melbourne city centre. “Dear Mum. I’m all right, I’ve been offered a job, I’ll see you in a week.”

***

               He deplaned in Los Angeles tired, cramped — the Metropolitan Public Library could afford magic golden ink and talking notepaper, but couldn’t spring for first class, apparently, which didn’t bode well for potential salary offers — and richer by three passports and several hundred dollars, courtesy of the people who _were_ in first class. One of the passport photos looked enough like Ezekiel to be useful, and the others could be edited with the right tools. He was fine, regardless. He’d only need an alias if anything went wrong, and he spent a lot of time moving chairs by centimetres, making sure nothing went wrong.

               He deplaned in New York fresh from a last-minute upgrade to first class, and with a nice new watch to boot. He took the train into Manhattan. The library was easy to find, and surprisingly uncrowded. He loitered outside for a bit. A job sounded like _work_ , really. And the public sector would hardly be lucrative.

               There were people going into the library. They all looked incredibly old. And boring. And… magic. But magic in a library. How good could it be? There would be all kinds of, ugh, rules. Ezekiel Jones did not do rules. One of the people going through the front door, a tall guy with a turban, stopped to hold the door for a sturdy-looking woman in sensible shoes, who thanked him. Nice. Very polite. Librarian material.

               Someone bumped into Ezekiel and he wound up with a wallet almost without thinking. “Sorry,” said the walker, and carried on.

               Inside the wallet was an I.D. for the Christie’s building. Rich folks’ auctions, lots of small valuables, that nobody would miss much. Against the rules, sure, but what good had rules ever done him? He could do better than being a librarian. He’d send his mum another postcard, telling her he would be a while.

 

               Ezekiel Jones was sixteen the day his Hogwarts letter arrived. He didn’t go to Hogwarts… or the Metropolitan Public Library… but he didn’t go back, either.


End file.
